Philosophy
The ethics of political polling and predictive modeling
Quick fact
Some political polls publish results with margins of error of ±3%, but real-world accuracy can be much worse; nonresponse bias and weighting adjustments can produce errors far larger than the stated margin, and these flaws are often invisible to the public.
Why this is interesting
Have you ever changed your mind about voting because a poll said your candidate was losing? That's not just psychology—it's a question of pollsters' ethics.